PS 







=^il 



I 237. VOU.V Ip^cE a CKNTS L.n^S^l\» ii 
|[ i\ov. 9, 1B86, r «^-»*'^ ^ ( SIO.OQ A YEAH. ,)l| 





The Elzevir Library— Continued; 



BIOGRAPHY. 

11 Sir Isaac Newton. James Parton 3c 

16 Life of Gustave Dore. Illustrated 2© 

35 Alex. H. Stephens. Norton 8e 

38 Richard Wagner. Bertha Thomas 2c 

41 Peter Cooper. C. Edwards Lester 8c 

50 Life of Irving, by R. H. Stofldard, also three other sketches. 10c 

Life of "Washington. Wm. M. Thayer 25c 

75 Sam Houston. C. Edwards Lester 15c 

100 James Ferguson, the Astronomer ^c 

104 Count Runxford. John Tyndall 2c 

135 Wendell Phillips. Gteo. Wm. Curtis 2c 

142 Lecture on Emerson. Matthew Arnold 2c 

155 Thomas Carlyle. Augustine Birrell 2c 

178 Life of Hannibal. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby Sc 

183 Julius Caesar. H. G. Liddell 8c 

219 Charles Brockden Brown. Prescott 3c 

220 Cervantes. Prescott 3c 

221 Sir Walter Scott. Prescott 5c 

222 Mohere. Wm. H. Prescott 3c 

Marcus Aurelius. Matthew Arnold 3c 

Thackeray. By author of Rab and His Friends 5c 

Cyrus the Great. Geo. Rawlinson 2e 

life of Chinese Gtordon. Archibald Forbes 15c 

367 Philosophy of Style. Herbert Spencer 3c 

By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

'' 213 On Intellect 2e 

214 On Art -. ... 2c. 

237 On Experience . ... 2c 

238 On Cliaracter 2e 

239 On Manners - . . 2c 

323 Self -Reliance 3c 



165 On Heroism 2c 

168 On Love 2c 

208 On Nattire 4c 

209 Method of Nature 2c 

210 On History 2c 

212 On Friendship 2c 

By MAURICE THOMPSON. 

302 Cuckoo Notes 3c 

303 Anatomy of Bird Song . . 3c 

305 Some Hyoid Hints , 2a 

FAMOUS POEMS. 

361 Poe, Edgar A. The Raven, and other Poems 3c 

339 Spenser. The Red Cross Knight and Dragon 3c 

836 Arnold, Matthew. Favorite Poems 3c 

335 Keats. The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems 3c 

334 Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Favorite Poems 3c 

333 Chaucer. The Story of Grisilde 3c 

325 Dana, Richard H. The Buccaneers 2c 

320 Mediaeval Religious Poems. The Celestial City, etc 3c 

316 Gray's Elegy, and Other Poems 3g 

315 Southey. Inchcape Rock, and Other Poems 3c 

314 Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamlin, etc 3c 

313 Browning, Mrs. Ladv Geraldine's Courtship 3c 

311 Hood. The Bridge of Sighs, and Other Poems 3c 

277 LowelPs Early Poems 15c 

256 Bryant's Early Poems 15c 

249 Whittier's Early Poems 15c 

240 Longfellow's Early Poems 10c 

366 Pope's Essay on Man 5c 

150 Moore. Irish Melodies 8c 

362 Goethe. Hermann and Dorothea 5c 

106 Aytoun. The Heart of Bruce, etc • • 2c 

375 Coleridge. Ancient Mariner . • 3c 

JOl Byron, Lord. Mazeppa 2c 

89 Campbell, (Jertrude of Wyoming 2c 

36 Schiller's Song of the Bell, etc... 2c 

28 Ingelow, Jean. Songs of Seven, and Other Po«ns 3c 

380 Eliot, George. How LLsa Loved the King 3e 

358 Biu-ng, Robert. Cotter's Saturday Night, etc 8c 

377 Goldsmith. The Deserted Village, Etc 3« 

360 Tennyson, Alfred. EnochArden 3c 



K^4 



EXPEKIENCE. 



The lords of life, the lords of .U(e,— 
I saw them pass, 
In their own guise. 
Like and unlike, 
Portly and grim, 
Use and Surprise, 
Surface and Dream, 
Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, 
Temperament without a tongue, 
And the inventor of the game 
Omnipresent without name; — 
Some to see, some to be guessed, 
They marched f i"om east to v/est : 
Little man, least of all, 
Among the legs of his guardians tall, 
Walked about with puzzled look: — 
Him by tlie hand dear nature took; 
Dearest nature, strong and kind, 
Whispered, 'Darling, nevermind! 
To-morrow they will wear another face, 
The founder thou! these are thy race! ' 



Where do we find ourselves ? In a series 
of wliicli wo do not know the extremes, and 
believe that it has none. We walce and find 
ourselves on a stair ; there ai'e stairs l)elow us, 
wliich we seem to have ascended ; there are 
stairs above us, many a one, wliich go upward 
and out o» sight. But tlie Genius which, 
according to the old belief, stands at -^e door 
by wliich we enter, and gives us the lethe to 
drink, that we may tell no tales, mi?ed the 
cup too etro'igly, and we cannot shake off the 
lethargy now at noonday. Sleep lingers all 
our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers 
•tS^ day in the boughs of the fir-tree. Ail 
things swim and glitter. Our life is not so 



34 EXPERIENCE, 

much threatened as our perception. Ghost- 
like we glide through nature and should not 
know our place again. Did our birth fall in 
some fit of indigence and frugality in nature, 
that she was so sparing of her fii-e r.iid so lii>- 
eral of her enrth,that it ap]Hvirs to us tli.-it \v<^ 
hick the affirnnuive principle, and ihougii we 
have health and reason, yet we have no sujx'j- 
fluity of spirit for new creation ? We have 
enough to live and bring the year about, but 
not an ounce to impart or to invest. Ah that 
our Genius were a little more of a gf>nius ! 
We are like millers on the lower levels of a 
stream, when the factories above them have 
exhausted the water. We too fancy that the 
upper peo])le must have raised their dams. 

If any of us knew what we were doing or 
where v/e are going, then when we thiidc we 
best know ! We do not know to-day whether 
we are busy or idle. In times when v»o 
thought ourselves indolent we have after\var<'s 
discovered, that much Vv^as accomplished, and 
much was begun inns. All our days are S) 
unprofitable while they pass, that 'tis wonder- 
ful where or when we ever got anything of 
this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. 
We never got it on any dated calendar day. 
Some heavenly days must have been inter- 
calated somewhere, like those that Ilermes 
won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might 
be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked 
mean when they were suffered. Every ship is 
a romantic object, except that we sail in. Em- 
bark, and the romance quits our vessel, and 
hangs on evei-y other sail on the horizon. Oui-- 
life looks trivial, and we shun to record it. 
Men -seem to have learned of the horizon the 
art of perpetual retreating and reference. 
* Yonder uplands are rich pasturage, and my 
neighbor has fertile meadow, but my field,' 
says the quf^rulous farmer * only holds the 
world together.' I quote another man's say- 
ing; unluckily, that other withdraws himself 



EXPERIENCE, 35 

in the same way, and quotes me. 'Tis tlie 
trick of nature tlius to degrade to-day ; a good 
deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped 
magically in. Every roof is agrccahle to the 
eve, until it is lifted ; tlien we find tragedy 
:uh\ moaning women, and hard-eyed husbands, 
nnd deluges of lethe, and the men ask, ' What's 
the news?' as if the old were so bad. How 
many individuals can we count in society? 
how many actions? how many opinions? So 
much of our time is preparation, so much is 
routine, and so much retrospect, that the pith 
of each man's genius contracts itself to a very 
tew hours. The history of literature — take 
the net result of Tiraboschi, AVarton, or Schle- 
ji^el,^ — is a sum of very few ideas, and of very 
lew original tales, — all the rest being variation 
i)f these. So in this great society wide 
?ying around us, a critical analysis would find 
very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all 
custom and gross sense. There are even few 
opinions, and these seem oi-ganic in the speak- 
ers, and do not disturb the universal neces- 
sity. 

What opium is instilled into all disaster ! It 
shows formidable as we approach it, but there 
is at last no rough rasphig friction, but the 
most slippery sliding surfaces. We fall soft 
on a thought. Ate Dea is gentle, 

*' Over men's heads walking aloft, 
With tender feet treading so soft." 

People give and bemoan themselves, but it 
is not half so bad with them as they say. 
There are moods in which we court suffering, 
in the hope that here, at least, we shall fin'd 
leality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But 
it turns out to be scene-painting and counter- 
feit. The only thing grief has taught me, is 
to know how shallow it is. That, like all the 
rest, plays about the surface, and never intro- 
duces me into the reality, for contapt with- 



36 EXPERIENCE. 

which, we would even pay the costly price of 
sons and lovers. Was it Boscovich who found 
out that bodies never come in contact ? Well, 
souls never touch their objects. An innavi- 
gable sea washes with silent waves between 
us and the things we aim at and converse 
with. Grief too will make us idealists. In 
the death of my son, now more than two 
years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful 
estate, — no more. I cannot get it nearer to' 
me. If to-morrow I should be informed of the 
bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss 
of my property would be a great inconvenience 
to me, perhaps, for many years ; but it wouk] 
leave me as it found me, — neither better nor 
worse. So is it with this calamity : it does 
not touch me : some thing which I fancied 
was a part of me, which could not be torn 
away without tearing me, nor enlarged with- 
out enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves 
no scar. It was caducous. I grieve that grief 
can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step 
into real nature. The Indian who was laid 
under a curse, that the wind should not blow 
on him, nor water flow to him, nor lire burn 
him, is a type of us all. The dearest events 
are summer-rain, and we the Para coats that 
shed every drop. Nothing is left us now but 
death. We look to that with a grim satisfac- 
tion, saying, there at least is reality that will 
not dodge uSo 

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all 
objects, which lets them slip through our 
fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the 
most unhandsome part of our condition. Nat- 
ure does not like to be observed, and likes 
hat we should be her fools and playmates. 
We may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, 
but not a berry for our philosophy. Direct 
strokes she never gave us power to make ; all 
our blows glance, all our hits are accidents. 
Our relations to each other are oblique and 
casual. 



EXVKiiiENCE. 37 

Dream delivers us to dre.im, and there is no 
end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like 
a string of beads, and, as we pass through 
til em, they prove to be many-colored lenses 
which paint the world their own hue, and 
each shows only what lies in its focus. From 
the mountain you see the mountain. We ani- 
mate what we can, and we see only what we 
animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes 
that see them. It depends on the mood of the 
mMi5, whether he shall see the sunset or the 
fine ])oem. There are always sunsets, and 
there is always genius ; but only a few hours 
so serene that we can relish nature or criticism. 
The more or less depends on structure or tem- 
])erament. Temperament is the iron wire on 
w^liich the beads are strung. Of what use is 
fortune or talent to a cold and defective nature : 
Who cares what sensibility or discrimination a 
man has at some time shown, if he falls asleep 
in his chair ? or if he laugh and giggle? or if 
he apologize ? or is affected with egotism ? or 
thinks of his dollar ? or cannot go by food ? 
or has gotten a child in his boyhood ? Of what 
use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too 
concave, and cannot find a focal distance with- 
in the actual horizon of human life ? Of what 
use, if the brain is too cold or too hot, and the 
man does not care enough for results, to stimu- 
late hira to experiment, and hold him up in it? 
or if the web is too finely woven, too irritable by 
pleasure and pain, so that life stagnates from 
too much reception, without due outlet? Of 
what use to make heroic vows of amendment, 
if the same old law-breaker is to keep them ? 
What cheer can the religious sentiment yield, 
when that is suspected to be secretly dependent 
on the seasons of the year, and the state of the 
blood ? I knew a witty physician who found 
theology in the biliary duct,' and used to affirm 
that if there was disease in the liver, the man 
became a Calvinist, and if that organ was 
sound, he became a Unitarian. Very mortify- 



S8 EXPERIENCE. 

ing is the reluctant experience that some un- 
friendly excess or imbecility neutralizes the 
promise of genius. We see young men who 
owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly 
they promise, but they never acquit the debt; 
they die young and dodge the account : or 
if they live, they lose themselves in the 
crowd. 

Temperament also enters fully into the sys- 
tem of illusions, and shuts us in a prison of 
glass which we cannot see. There is an op- 
tical illusion about every person we meet. In 
truth, they are all creatures of given tempera- 
ment, which will appear in a given character, 
whose boundaries they will never pass : but 
we look at them, they seem alive, and we 
])resume there is impulse in them. In the 
moment it seems impulse ; in the year, in the 
lifetime, it turns out to be a certain uniform 
tune which the revolving barrel of the music- 
box must play. Men resist the conclusion in 
the morning, but adopt it as the evening wears 
on, that temper prevails over everything of 
time, place and condition, and is inconsumable 
in the flames of religion. Some modifications 
the moral sentiment avails to impose, but the 
individual texture holds its dominion, if not 
to bias the moral judgments, yet to fix the 
measure of activity and of enjoyment. 

I thus ex])ress the law as it is read from the 
platform of ordinary life, but must not leave 
it without noticing the capital exception. For 
temperament is a power which no man will- 
ingly hears any one praise but himself. On 
the platform of physics, we cannot resist the 
contracting influences of so-called science. 
Temperament jiuts all divinity to rout. I 
know the mental proclivity of physicians, I 
hear the chuckle of the phrenologists. The- 
oretic kidnappers and slave-drivers, they 
esteem each man the victim of another, who 
winds him round his finger by knowing the 
law of his being, and by such cheap signboard^ 



ESPURIENCB. SO 

as tlie color of Ins bonrd, or tlio slopo of liis 
occiput, T'onds the iiivciilory of his fortunes 
and cliarncter. 'V\\r Lvrcsscst iiinornnce docs 
nnt disixust IdvC tliis impudent knowinc'uoss. 
^i'lic ):liysici:ins snv, tliey are not n).Mt«'rialists ; 
1 lit tlu'V arc : — Spii'it is matter reduced to an 
extreme tlunness : O i-:<> thin ! — I>ul the<le(in!- 
ti( Ml of ,sy>/r/^/(5«/ should bo, t/i((t w/iic/i «.s' v'.^s- 
ow)i eviclence. What notions do tiiey attach 
to love ! what to religion ! One would not 
Vv'illinLily pronounce these words iii their hcar- 
ing, and give them the occasion to ])rofane 
them. I saw a gracious gentleman who adapts 
his conversation to the form of the head of 
the man he talks with ! I had fancied that 
the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibi- 
lities ; in the fact that I never know, in 
addressing myself to a new individual, what 
may befall me. I carry the keys of my castle 
in my hand, ready to throw them at the feet 
of my loi'd, whenever and in what disguise so- 
ever he shall ajipear. I know he is iu the 
neighborhood hidden among vagabonds. Shall 
I jireclude my future, by taking a high seat 
and kindly adapting my conversation to the 
shape of heads? When I come to that, the 

doctors shall buy me for a cent. 'But, sir, 

medical history; the report to the institute; 
the proven facts! ' — I distrust the facts and 
the inferences. Temperament is the veto or 
limitation-power in the constitution, very just- 
ly applied to restrain an opposite excess in 
tiie constitution, but absurdly offered as a bar 
to original equity. When virtue is in pres- 
ence, all subordinate powers sleep. On its own 
level, or iu view of nature, temperament is 
final. I see not, if one be once caught in this 
tcap of so-called sciences, any escape for the 
man from the links of the chain of physical 
necessity. Given such an embryo, such a 
history must follow. On this platform, one 
lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon 
come to suicide. But it is im]iossible that 



40 EXPERIENCE, 

the creative power should exclude itself. In- 
to every intelligence there is a door which is 
never closed, through which the creator passes. 
The intellect, seeker of absolute truth, or tlio 
heart, lover of absolute good, intervenes for 
our succor, and at one whisper of these 
high jDOwers, we awake from ineffectual strui'- 
gles with this nightmare. We hurl it into its 
own hell, and cannot again contract oursehes 
to so base a state. 

The secret of the illusoriness is in the neces- 
sity of a succession of moods or objects. 
Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage 
is quicksand. This onward trick of nature 
is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When, 
at night, I look at the moon and stars, I seem 
stationary, and they to hurry. Our love ol 
the real draws us to permanence, but health 
of body consists in circulation, and sanity ol 
mind in variety or facility of association. 
We need change of objects. Dedication to 
one thought is quickly odious. We house 
with the insane, and must humor them ; then 
conversation dies out. Once I took such de- 
light in Montaigne, that I thought I should 
not need any other book; before that, in 
Shakspeare ; then in Plutarch ; then in Plo- 
tinus ; at one time in Bacon ; afterwards in 
Goethe ; even in Bettine ; but now I turn the 
pages of either of them languidly, whilst I 
still cherish their genius. So with pictures ; 
each will bear an emphasis of attention once, 
which it cannot retain, though we fain would 
continue to be pleased in that manner. ITow 
strongly I have felt of pictures, that when you 
have seen one well, you must take your leave 
of it ; you shall never see it again. I have 
.1 good lessons from pictures, which I have 
;)ce seen without emotion or remark. A de- 
lict ion must be made from the opinion. 
v\ liich even the wise express of a new book 
or occurrence. Their opinion gives me tid- 



EXPERIENCE. 41 

ings of their mood, and some vague guess at 
the new fact, but is nowise to be trusted as 
the lasting relation between that intellect and 
that thing. The child asks, ' Mama, why 
don't I like the story as well as wlien you 
told it me yesterday?' Alas, child, it is eveii 
so with the oldest cherubim of knowledge. 
But will it answer thy question to gay, Bf- 
cause thou wert born to a whole, and tln^ 
story is a particular? The reason of the pain 
this discovery causes us (and we make it late 
in resjiect to works of art and intellect), is 
the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from it 
in regard to persons, to friendship and love. 

That immobility and absence of elasticity 
which we find in the arts, we find with more 
pain in the artist. There is no power of ex- 
pansion in men. Our friends early appear to 
us as representatives of certain ideas, which 
they never pass or exceed. They stand on 
the brink of the ocean of thought and power, 
but they never take the single step that would 
bring them there. A man is like a bit of Lab- 
rador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it 
in your hand, until you come to a particular 
angle ; then it shows deep and beautiful 
colors. There is no adaptation or universal 
aj^plicability in men, but each has his special 
talent, and the mastery of successful men 
consists in adroitly keeping themselves where 
and when that turn shall be oftenest to be 
practised. We do what we must, and call it 
by the best names we can, and would fain 
have the praise of having intended the result 
which ensues. I cannot recall any form of 
man who is not superfluous sometimes. Bui 
is not this pitiful? Life is not worth the 
taking, to do tricks in. 

Of course, it needs the whole society, to give 
the SNumietry we seek. The parti-colored 
wheel must revolve very fast to appear white. 
Something is learned too by conversing with 
BO much folly and defect. In fine, whoever 



42 EXPEBIENCE. 

loses, we are always of the gaining party. Di- 
A inity is behind our failures and follies also. 
The plays of children are nonsense, but very 
educative nonsense. So it is with the Inrgest 
and solemnest things, with commerce, govern- 
ment, church, marriage, and so with the his- 
tory of every man's bread, and the ways by 
which he is to come by it. Like a bird which 
alights nowhere, but hops per])etually from 
bough to bough, is the Power which abides in 
no man and in no woman, but for a moment 
speaks from this one, and for another moment 
from that one. 

But what help from these fineries or pedan- 
tries ? What help from thought ? Life is not 
dialectics. ^Ye, I think, in these times, have 
had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. 
Our young jieople have thought and written 
much on labor and reform, and for all that 
they have written, neither the world nor 
themselves have got on a step. Intellectual 
tasting of life will not supersede muscular 
activity. If a man should consider the nicety 
of the passage of a piece of bread down his 
throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm 
the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest 
figures of young men and maidens, quite pow- 
erless and melancholy. It would not rake or 
pitch a ton of hay ; it Avould not rub down a 
horse ; and the men and maidens it left pale 
and hungry. A political orator wittily com- 
pared our party ])romises to western roads, 
which opened stately enough, with planted 
trees on either side, to tempt the traveller, but 
soon became narrow and narrower, and ended 
in a squirrel-track, and ran up a tree. So does 
culture with us ; it ends in head-ache. Un- 
speakably sad and barren does life look to 
those, who a few montl:s ago were dazzled 
with the si)lendor of the promise of the times. 
*' There is now no longer any right course of 
action, nor any self-devotioii left among the 



KXPKLIJCXCE. 43 

li'niiis." Objoctioiis .'ui<l criticism we have 
IkuI our fill of. Tiiei'e are objections to every 
courseof life and actioii,an(l the ])racticn! wis- 
dom infers an indifferency, from the omnipres- 
ence of objection. The whole frame of 
things preaches inrlifferency. Do not craze 
yourself with thinkinor, but i;o about your 
business anywhere. Life is not intellectual 
or critical, but sturdy. Its chief good is for 
well-mixed peopl* who can enjoy what they 
find, without question . Nature hates peeping, 
and our mothers speak her very sense when 
they say, "Children, eat your victuals, and 
say no more of it." To fill the hour, — that 
is happiness ; to fill the hour, and leave no 
crevice for a repentance or an af)proval. We 
live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to 
skate well on them. Under the oldest mouldi^ 
est conventions, a man of native force prospers 
just as well as in the newest world, and that 
by skill of handling and treatment. He can 
take hold anywhere. Life itself is a mixture 
of power and form, and will not bear the least 
excess of either. To finish the moment, to 
find the journey's end in every step of the 
road, to live the greatest number of good 
hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of inen, 
l)ut of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you 
will, to say, that, the shortness of life con- 
sidered, it is not worth caring whether for se 
short a duration we were sprawling in want, 
or sitting high. Since our office is with mo< 
ments, let us husband them. Five minutes of 
to-day are worth as much to me, as five 
minutes in the next millennium. Let us be 
poised, and wise, and our own, to-day. Let us 
treat the men and woman well : treat them as 
if they were real : perhaps they are. Men 
live in their fancy, like drunkards whose 
hands are too soft and tremulous for success- 
ful labor. It is a tempest of fancies, and the 
only ballast I know, is a respect to the present 
hour. Without any shadow of doubt, amidst 



44 EXPERIENCE. 

this vertigo of shows and politics, I settle my- 
self ever the firmer in the creed, that vr& 
should not postpone and refer and wish, but, 
do broad justice where we are, by whomso- 
ever we deal with, accepting our actual com- 
panions and circumstances, however humble 
or odious, as the mystic officials to whom the 
universe has delegated its whole pleasure for 
us. If these are mean and malignant, their 
contentment, which is the last victory of 
justice, is a more satisfying echo to the 
heart, than the voice of poets and the casual 
sympathy of admirable persons. I think that 
however a thoughtful man may suffer from 
the defects and absurdities of his company^ 
he cannot without affectation deny to any set 
of men and women, a sensibility to extraordi- 
nary merit. The coarse and frivolous have 
an instinct of superiority, if they have not a 
sympathy, and honor it in their blind capri. 
cious way with sincere homage. 

The fine young people despise life, but in 
me, and in such as with me are free from dys* 
pepsia, and to whom a day is a sound ancl 
solid good, it is a great excess of politeness t<> 
look scornful and to cry for company. I am 
grown by sympathy a little eager and senti- 
mental, but leave me alone, and I should relish 
every hour and what it brouglit me, the pot- 
luck of the day, as heartily as the oldest 
gossip in the bar-room. I am thankful for 
small mercies. 1 compared notes with one of 
my friends who expects everything of the 
universe, and is disappointed when anything 
is less than the best, and I found that I begin 
at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and 
am always full of thanks for moderate goods. 
I accept the clangor and jangle of contrary 
tendencies. I find my account in sots and 
bores also. They give a reality to the cir- 
cumjacent picture, which such a vanishing 
meteorous appearance can ill spare. In the 
morning I awake, and find the old world, 



KXPKIilENCE. 46 

wife. ])abes, and mother, Concord and Boston, 
ilie (k'.ir old spiritual world, and even tlie dear 
old devil not far off. If we will take the good 
we find, asking no questions, we shall hav« 
lie.Mping measures. The great gifts are not 
t:nt by analysis. Everything good is on the 
iiighway. The middle region of our being is 
l!ie temperate zone. We may climb into the 
tliin and cold realm of pure geometry and life- 
less science, or sink into tliat of sensation. 
Ik'lween tliese extremes is the equator of life, 
of thought, of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow belt. 
]\l()reover, in po])ular experience everything 
good is on the highway. A collector peeps 
into all the ]>icture-shops ot' Europe, for a 
landscape of- Poussin, a crayon-sketch of Sal- 
vator ; but the Transfiguration, the Last 
Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, 
and what are as transcendent as these, are on 
the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizii, or the 
Louvre, where every footman may see them ; 
to say nothing of nature's pictures in every 
street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, and 
the sculpture of the human body never absent. 
A collector recently bought at public auction, 
in London, for one hundred and fifty-seven 
guineas, an autograph of Shakspeare : but for 
nothing a school-boy can read Ilamlet, and 
can detect secrets of highest concernment yet 
nnpublished therein. I think I will never 
read any but the commonest books, — the Bible, 
Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. Then 
we are impatient of so public a life and ]danet, 
and run hither and thither for nooks aiul 
secrets. The imagination delights in the wood- 
craft of Indians, trappers, and bee-hunters. 
We fancy that we are strangers, and not so 
intimately domesticLted in the planet as the 
wild man, and the wild beast and bird. But 
the exclusion reaches them also ; reaches the 
climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four- 
footed man. Fox and wood chuck, hawk and 
inipe, and bittern, when nearly seen, have no 



46 EXPERIENCE. 

more root in the deep world than man, and 
are jiist such superficial tenants of the globe. 
Then the new molecular philosophy shows 
astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and 
atom, shows that the world is all outside : it 
has no inside. 

The mid-world is best. Nature, as we know 
lier, is no saint. The lights of the church, 
the ascetics, Gentoos and Grahamites, she 
does not distinguish by any favor. She comes 
eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, 
the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not 
children of our law, do not come out of the 
Sunday School, nor weigh their food, nor 
punctually keep the commandments. If we 
will be strong with her strength, we must not 
harbor sucli disconsolate consciences, bor- 
rowed too from the consciences of other na- 
tions. We must set up the strong present 
tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or 
to come. So many things are unsettled which 
it is of the first importance to settle, — and, 
pending their settlement, we will do as we do. 
Whilst the debate goes forward on the equity 
of commerce, and will not be closed for a cen- 
tury or two, New and Old England may keep 
shop. Law of copyright and international 
copyright is to be discussed, and, in the interim, 
we will sell our books for the most we can. 
Expediency of literature, reason of literature, 
lawfulness of writing down a thought, is 
questioned ; much is to say on both sides, and, 
wliile the fight Avaxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, 
stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hcnir, 
and between whiles add a line. IJight to hold 
land, right of property, is disputed, and the 
conventions convene, and before the vote is , 
taken, dig away in your garden, and sj>end 
your earnings as a waif or godsend to all se- 
rene and beautiful purposes. Life itself is a 
bubble and a scepticism, and a sleep within a 
sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they 
will, — but thou, God's darling! heed thy pri- 



l^JXl 'ERIEN CE. 47 

vnte dream : thou wilt not be missed in the 
sconiim; and scepticism : tliere are enough of 
tliem : stay there in thy closet, and toil, until 
the rest arc agreed what to do about it. 
Tiiv sickness, they say, and thy ]>uny habit, 
require that thou do this or avoid that, but 
l:now that thy life is a flitting state, a tent 
for a night, and do thou, sick or well, finish 
that stint. Thou art sick, but shalt not be 
worse, and the universe, which holds thee 
dear, shall be the better. 

Human life is made up of the two elements, 
])0\ver and form, and the proportion must be 
invariably kept, if we would have it sweet and 
sound. Each of these elements in excess 
makes a mischief as hurtful as its defect. 
Everything runs to excess : every good quality 
is noxious,' if unmixed, and, to carry the dan- 
jrer to the edge of ruin, nature causes each 
man's peculianty to superabound. Here, a- 
mong the farms, we adduce the scholars as ex- 
am pfes of this treachery. They are nature's 
victims of expression. *You who see the ar- 
tist, the orator, the poet, too near, and find 
their life no more excellent than that of mecha- 
nics or farmers, and themselves victims of 
partiality, very hollow and haggard, and pro- 
nounce them failures, — not heroes, but quacks, 
— conclude very reasonably, that these arts are 
not for man, "but are disease. Yet nature will 
not bear you out. Irresistible nature made 
men such, and makes legions more of such, 
every day. You love the boy reading in a 
book, crazing at a drawing, or a cast : yet what 
are these millions who read and behold, but 
incipient writers and sculptors? Add a little 
more of that quality which now reads and sees, 
and tliey will seize the ])en and chisel. And 
if one remembers how innocently he began to 
be an artist, he perceives that nature joined 
with his enemy. A man is a golden impossi- 
bility. The line he ratist walk is a hair's breadth. 



48 EXPERIENCE. 

The wise through excess of wisdom is made 
a fool. 

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we 
might keep forever these beautiful limits, and 
adjust ourselves, once for all, to the perfect cal- 
culation of the kingdom of known cause and 
effect. In the street and in the newspapers, 
life appears so plain a business, that manly 
resolution and adherence to the multiplication- 
table through all weathers, will insure success. 
But ah ! presently comes a day, or it is oidy a 
half-hour, with its angel-whispering, — which 
discomfits the conclusions of nations and of 
years ! To-morrow again, everything looks 
real and angular, the habitual standards are 
reinstated, common sense is as rare as genius, — 
is the basis of genius, and experience is hands 
and feet to every enterprise ; — and yet, he who 
should do his business on this understanding, 
would be quickly bankrupt. Power keeps 
quite another road than the turnpikes of choice 
and will, namely, the subterranean and invisi- 
ble tunnels and channels of life. It is ridicu- 
lous that we are diplomatists, and doctors, and 
cosiderate people : there are no dupes like 
these. Life is a series of surprises, and would 
not be worth taking or keeping, if it were not. 
God delights to isolate us every day, and hide 
fi'om us the past and the future. We should 
look about us, but with grand politeness lie 
draws down before us an inpenetrable screen 
of purest sky, and another behind us of purest 
sky. ' You will not remember,' he seems to 
say, ' and you will not expect.' All good 
conversation, manners, and action, come from 
a spontaneity which forgets usages, and makes 
the moment great. Nature hates calculators ; 
her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man 
lives by pulses ; our organic movements are 
such ; and the chemical and ethereal agents 
are undulatory and alternate ; and the mind 
goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but 
by fits. We thrive by casualties. Our chief 



EXPERIENCE. 4© 

experiences have been casual. The most at- 
tiTiCtive class of people are those who are pow- 
erful obliquely, and not by the direct stroke : 
men of genius, but not yet accredited : one 
gets the cheer of their light, without paying 
too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the 
bird, or the morning light, and not of art. In 
the thought of genius there is always a sur- 
])rise ; and the moral sentiment is well called 
" the newness," for it is never other ; as new 
to the oldest intelligence as to the young 
child, — " the kingdom that cometh without 
observation." In like manner, for practical suc- 
cess, there must not be too much design. A 
man will not be observed in doing that which 
he can do best. There is a certain magic about 
his properest action, which stupefies you pow- 
ers of observation, so that though it is done 
before you, you wist not of it. The art of life 
has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every 
man is an impossibility, until he is born ; every 
thing impossible, until we see a success. The 
ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest 
scepticism, — that nothing is of us or our 
works, — that all is of God. Nature will not 
spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writ- 
ing comes by the grace of God, and all doing 
and having. I would gladly be moral, and keep 
due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, 
and allow the most to the will of man, b^it I 
have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, 
and I can see nothing at last, in success or 
failure, than more or less of vital force sup- 
plied from the Eternal. The results of life 
are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years 
teach much which the days never know. 
The persons who compose our company, con- 
verse, and come and go, and design and exe- 
cute many things, and somewhat comes of it 
all, but an unlocked for result. The individ- 
ual is always mistaken. He designed many 
things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors 
quarrelled with gome or all, blundered much. 



60 EXPERIENCE. 

and something is done ; all are a little ad vance* 
but tlie individual is always mistaken. It turn, 
out somewhat new, and very unlike what Ik 
promised himself. 

The ancients, struck with this irreducible- 
ness of the elements of human life to calcula- 
tion, exalted Chance into a divinity, but that 
is to stay too long at the spark, — which glit- 
ters truly at one point, — but the universe is 
w\irm with the latency of the same fire. Tlie 
miracle of life which will not be expounded, 
but will remain a miracle, introduces a new 
element. In the growth of the embryo, Sir 
Everard Home, I thuik, noticed that the evo- 
lution was not from one central point, but ro- 
active from three or more points. Life has 
no memory. That which proceeds in succes- 
sion might be remembered, but that which is 
coexistent, or ejaculated from a deeper cause, 
as yet far from being conscious, knows not its 
own tendency. So is it with us, now scepti- 
cal, or without unity, because immersed in 
forms and effects all seeming to be of equal 
yet hostile value, and now religious, whilst in 
the reception of spiritual law. Bear with 
these distractious,with this coetaneous growth 
of the parts : they will one day be inemhers^ 
and obey one will. On that one will, on that 
secret cause, they nail our attention and 
hope. Life is hereby melted into an exj)ecta- 
tion or a religion. IJnderneath the inhariuo- 
nious and trivial particulars, is a musical |)ci-- 
fection, the Ideal journeying always with us, 
the heaven without rent or seam. Do but 
observe the mode of our illumination. AYhen 
I converse with a profound mind, or if .".t any 
time being alpne I have good thoughts, I do 
not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when, 
being thirsty, I drink water, or go to the fire, 
being cold : no ! but T am at first aji]irised of 
mv vicinity to a new and excellent region of 
life. By persist inu- to read or to think, tlii?? 
reirion irives further siii-n of itself, as it wero 



EXPERIENCE. 61 

in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its 
])rofound beauty and repose, as if the clouds 
tliat covered it parted at intervals, and 
siiowed the ap])roaching traveller the inland 
inountnins, with the tranquil eternal meadows 
spread at tlieir base, whereon flocks graze, 
and shepherds pipe and dance. But every 
insight i'roiu this realm of thought is felt ;is 
initial, and promises a sequel. I do not 
make it ; I arrive there, and behold what 
was there already. I make ! O, no ! I clap 
my hands in infantine joy and amaze- 
ment, before the first opening to me of 
this august magnificence, old with the love 
and homage of innumerable ages, young with 
the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the 
desert. And what a future it opens ! I feel 
a new heart beating with the love of the new 
beauty. I am ready to die out of nature, and 
be born again into this new yet unapproach- 
able America I have found in the West. 

" Since neither now nor yesterday began 
These thoughts, which liave l)eeu ever, nor yet can 
A man be found who their tirst entrance knew." 

If I have described life as a flux of moods, I 
must now add, that there is that in us which 
changes not, and which ranks all sensations 
and states of mind. The consciousness in 
each man is a sliding scale, which identifies 
him now with the First Cause, and now with 
the flesh of his body ; life above life, in infi- 
nite degrees. The sentiment from which it 
sprung determines the dignity of any deed,, 
and the question ever is, not, what you have 
done or forborne, but, at whose conimand you 
have done or forborne it. 

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — . 
these are quaint names, too narrow to cover 
this unbounded substance. The baflied intel- 
lect must still kneel before this cause, which 
refuses to be named, — ineffable cause, which 
every fine genius has essayed to represent by 



52 EXPERIENCE. 

soino emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water, 
AnaximeiK'S by air, Aiiaxagoras by (iVov?) 
t'.ioiiglit, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the mod- 
erns by love : and the metaphor of each has 
become a national religion. The Chinese 
Mencius has not been the least successful in 
his generalization. "I fully understand lan- 
•guage," he said, " and nourish Avell my vast- 
flowing vigor." — " I beg to ask what you call 
vast-flowing vigor ? " — said his companion. 
" The explanation," replied Mencius, *' is 
difticult. This vigor is supremely great, and 
in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it 
correctly, and do it no injury, and it will fill 
up the vacancy between heaven and earth. 
This vigor accords with and assists justice 
and reason, and leaves no hunger." — In our 
more correct writing, we give to this generali- 
zation the name of Being, and thereby con- 
fess that we have arrived as far as we can go. 
Suffice it for the joy of the universe, that we 
have not arrived at a wall, but at intermin- 
able oceans. Our life seems not present, so 
much as prospective ; not for the affairs on 
which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast- 
flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere 
advertisement of faculty : information is 
given us not to sell ourselves cheap ; that we 
are very great. So, in particulars, our great- 
ness is always in a tendency or direction, not 
in an action. It is for us to believe in the 
rule, not in the exception. The noble are 
thus known from the ignoble. So in accept- 
ing the leading of the sentiments, it is not 
what we believe concerning the immortality 
of the soul, or the like, but the universal im- 
pulse to believe., that is the material circum- 
stance, and is the principal fact in the history 
of the globe. Shall we describe this cause as 
that which works directly ? The spirit is not 
helpless or needful of mediate organs. It 
has plentiful powers and direct effects. I am 
explained without explaining, 1 am felt with- 



EXPEUIEt^CE. tJ3 

out acting, and where I am not. Therefore 
all just persons are satisfied with their own 
praise. They refuse to explain themselves, 
and are content that new actions should do 
them that office. They believe that we com- 
municate without speech, and above speech, 
and that no right action of ours is quite un- 
aft'ecting to our friends, at whatever distance ; 
for the influence of action is not to be meas- 
ured by miles. Why should I fret myself, 
because a circumstance has occurred, which 
hinders my presence where I was expected ? 
If I am not at the meeting, my presence 
where I am, should be as useful to the com- 
monwealth of friendship and wisdom, as 
would be my prescuce in that place. I exert 
the same quality of power in all places. Thus 
journeys the mighty Ideal before us ; it never 
was known to fall into the rear. No man 
ever came to an experience which was satiat- 
ing, but his good is tidings of a better. On- 
ward and onward ! In liberated moments, 
we know that a new j^icture of life and duty 
is already |)Ossible ; the elements already 
exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine 
of life which shall transcend any written re- 
cord we have. The new statement will com- 
prise the scepticisms, as well as the faiths of 
society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be 
formed. For, sce|)ticisms are not gratuitous 
or lawless, but are limitations of the affirma- 
tive statement, and the new philosophy must 
take them in, and make affirmations outside of 
them, just as much as it must include the 
oldest beliefs. 

It is very unhappy, but too late to De 
helped, the discovery we have made, that we 
exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. 
Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. 
We have learned that we do not see directly, 
but mediately, and that we have no means of 
correcting these colored and distorting lenses 
which we are, or of computing the amount of 



t)4 EXPERIENCE. 

their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses 
have a creative power ; ])erhaps there are no 
objects. Once we lived in w^hat we saw ; 
now, the rapaciousness of this new power, 
which threatens to absorb all thinos, eno^ajyes 
us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — 
objects, successively tumble in, and God is 
but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are 
subjective phenomena ; every evil and every 
good thing is a shadow which we cast. The 
street is full of humiliations to the proud. As 
the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his 
livery', and make them wait on his guests at 
table, so the chagrins which the bad heart 
gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies 
and gentlemen in the street, shopmen or bar- 
keepers in hotels, and threaten or insult w^hat- 
ever is threatenable and insultable in us. 'Tia 
the same with our idolatries. People forget 
that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and 
the rounding mind's eye which makes this Of 
that man a type or representative of humanity 
with the name of hero or saint. Jesus the 
"providential man," is. a good man on wdiom 
many people are agreed that these optical laws 
shall take effect. By love on one part, and by 
forbearance to press objection on the other 
part, it is for a time settled, that we will look 
at him in the centre of the horizon, and as-* 
cribe to him the properties that will attach to 
any man so seen. But the longest love or avei*- 
sion has a speedy term. The great and crcs- 
cive self, roofed in absolute nature, supplants 
all relative existence, and ruins the kingdom ot 
mortal friendship and love. Marriage (in wdmt 
is called the spiritual world) is impossible, ^)v* 
cause of the inequality between every subject 
and every object. The subject is the receivei' 
of Godhead, and at every comparison must 
feel his being enhanced by that cryptic might. 
Though not in energy, yet by presence, this 
magazine of substance cannot be otherwise 
than felt : nor can any force of intellect at* 



EXPERIENCE, 55 

tribute to tlie object the i)roper deity wliiel) 
8lee]>s or wakes forever in every subject, 
r^^evcr can love make consciousness and ascrij>- 
tion e(]nal in force. Tliei'e will be the same 
\\\\i between every me and thee, as between 
I he orifj^inal a.nd the i)icture. Tlie universe is 
the bride of the soul. All j^rivate symjjathy 
is ]iartial. Two human beings are like globes, 
which can touch only in a ])oint, and, whilst 
they remain in contact, all other ]»oints of 
each of the spheres are inert ; their turn must 
:dso come, and the longer a, ])articular union 
lasts, the more energy of appetency the parts 
not in union acquire. 

Life will be imaged, but cannot be divided 
nor doubled. Any invasion of its unity would 
be chaos. The soul is not twin-born, but the 
only begotten, and though revealing itself as 
child in time, child in appearance, is of a fatal 
and universal power, admitting no co-life. 
Every day, every act betrays the ill-con- 
cealed deity. We believe in ourselves, as 
"we do not believe in others. We permit all 
things to ourselves, and that which we call 
sin in others, is experiment for ns. It is an 
instance of our faith in ourselves, that men 
never speak of crime as lightly as they thiid<: : 
or, every man thinks a latitude safe for him- 
self, which is nowise to be indulged to 
another. The act looks very differently on 
the inside, and on the outsi<le ; in its quality, 
and in its consequences. Murder in the mur- 
derer is no such ruinous thought as jtoets and 
romancers will have it ; it dt)es not unsettle 
him, or fright him from iiis ordinary notice of 
tiitles : it is an act quite easy to bo contem- 
]!latcMl, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a 
iiorrible jang'ie and confoiuuling of all rela- 
tions. Esj)eciaily the crimes that spring from 
love, seem right and fair from the actor's 
point of view, but, when acted, are found de- 
structive of society. . Xo man at last believes 
that he can be lost, nor tliat the crime in him 



66 EXPERIENCE. 

is as biacK as in the felon. Because the in- 
tellect qualifies in our own case the moral 
judgments. For there is no crime to the 
intellect. That is antinomian or hypernomiaii, 
and judges law as well as fact. " It is worse 
than a crime, it is a blunder," said iSra2)oleon, 
speaking the language of the intellect. To it, 
the world is a problem in mathematics or the 
science of quantity, and it leaves out praise 
and blame, and all weak emotions. All steal- 
ing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, 
pray who does not steal ? Saints are sad, 
because they behold sin, (even when they 
speculate,) from the point of view of the con- 
science, and not of the intellect ; a confusion 
of thought. Sin seen from the thought, is a 
diminution or less : seen from the conscience 
or will, it is pravity or bad. The intellect 
names it shade, absence of light, and no 
essence. The conscience must feel it as 
essence, essential evil. This it is not : it has 
an objective existence, but no subjective. 

Thus inevitably does the universe wear our 
color, and every object fall successively into 
the subject itself. The subject exists, the 
subject enlarges ; all things sooner or later fall 
into place. As I am, so I see ; use what lan- 
guage we will, w^e can never say anything but 
what we are ; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, 
Newton, Buonaparte, are the mind's ministers. 
Instead of feeling a poverty w^hen we en- 
counter a great man, let us treat the new 
comer like a travelling geologist, who passes 
through our estate, and shows us good slate, or 
limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture. 
The partial action of each strong mind in one 
direction, is a telescope for the objects on 
w^hich it is pointed. But every other part of 
knowledge is to be pushed to the same extrav- 
agance, ere the soul attains her due spheric- 
ity. Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily 
her own tail? If you could look with her 
eyes, you might see her surrounded with bun- 



expehienck 51 

drods of figures performing comj^lex dramas, 
with tragic and comic issues, long conversa- 
tions, many characters, many ups and downs 
of fate, — and meantime it is only puss and 
her tail. How long before our masquerade 
will end its noise of tamborines, laughter, and 
shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary 
perfornrance ? — A subject and an object, — it 
takes so much to make the galvanic circuit, 
complete, but magnitude adds nothing. What 
imports it whether it is Kepler and the sphere ; 
Columbus and America ; a reader, and his 
book ; or puss with her tail ? 

It is true that all the muses and love and 
religion hate these developments, and will find 
a way to punish the chemist, who publishes 
in the parlor the secrets of the laboratory. 
And we cannot say too little of our constitu- 
tional necessity of seeing things under private 
aspects, or saturated with our humors. And 
yet is the God the native of the«e bleak rocks. 
That need makes in morals the capital virtue 
of self-trust. AVe must hold hard to this 
poverty, however scandalous, and by more 
vigorous self-recoveries, after the sallies of 
action, possess our axis more fii-mly. The life 
of truth is cold, and so far mournful ; but it is 
not the slave of tears, contritions, and pertur- 
bations. It does not attempt another's work, 
nor adopt another's facts. It is a main lesson 
of wisdom to know your own from another's. 
I liave learned that I cannot dispose of other 
people's facts ; but I possess such a key to my 
own, as persuades me against all their denials, 
that tliey also have a key to theirs. A sympa- 
thetic person is placed in the dilemma of a 
swimmer among drowning men, who all catch 
at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a 
finger, they will drown him. They wish to 
be saved from tlie mischiefs of their vices 
but not from their vices. Charity would be 
wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. 



58 EXPEBIENCE. 

A wise and hardy physician will sa}', Cone out 
of that, as the first condition of advice. 

In this our talking Americn, we are ruined 
by our good nature and listening on all sides. 
This compliance takes away the power of being 
greatly useful. A man should not be able to 
look other than directly and forthright. A 
preoccupied attention is the only answer to tho 
importunate frivolity of other people : an at- 
tention, and to an aim which makes theii 
wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, an(\ 
leaves no appeal, and no hard thoughts. In 
Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides oi 
jEschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst 
the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face 
of the god expresses a shade of regret and 
compassion, but calm with the conviction ol 
the irreconcilableness of the two spheres. 
He is born into other politics, into the eternal 
and beautiful. The man at his feet asks for 
his interest in turmoils of the earth, into 
which his nature cannot enter. And the 
Eumenides there lying express pictorially this 
disparity. The god is surcharged with his 
divine destiny. 

Illusion, Temperament, Succession, Sur- 
face, Surprise, Reality, Subjectiveness, — these 
are threads on the loom of time, these are 
the lords of life. I dare not assume to give 
their order, but I name them as I find them 
in my way. I know better than to claim any 
completeness for my picture. I am a frag- 
ment, and this is a fragment of me. I can 
.very confidently, announce one or another law. 
w^hich throws itself into relief and form, but 
I am too young yet by some ages to compile 
a code. I gossip for my hour concerning the 
eternal politics. I have seen many f::ir ])ic- 
tures not in vain. A wonderful time I have 
lived in. I am not the novice I was fourteen, 
nor yet seven years ago. Let who will ask, 
where is the fruit ? I find a private fruit 



EXFElilENCE. 59 

sufiicioiit. This is a fruit, — that I should not 
nsk for a rash effect from meditations, coun- 
sels, and the hiving of truths. I should feel 
it pitiful to demand a result on this town 
mid county, an overt effect on the instant 
month and year. The effect is deep and secu- 
lar as the cause. It works on periods in 
which mortal lifetime is lost. All I know is 
reception ; I am and I have : but I do not 
get, and when I have fancied I had gotten 
anything, I found I did not. I worship 
with wonder the great Fortune. My recep- 
tion has been so large, that I am not annoyed 
by receiving this or that superabundantly. I 
say to the Genius, if he will pardon the ]n*ov- 
berb, In for a mill^ in for a million. When 
I receive a new gift, I do not macerate my 
body to make the account square, for, if 1 
should die, 1 could not make the account 
square. The benefit overran the merit the 
first day, and has overran the merit ever since. 
The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of 
llie receiving. 

Also, that hankering after an overt or 2:)rac- 
tical effect seems to me an apostasy. In good 
earnest, I am willing to spare this most unne- 
cessary deal of doing. Life wears to me a 
visionary face. Hardest, roughest action is 
visionary also. It is but a choice between 
soft and turbulent dreams. People disparage 
knowing and the intellectual life, and urge 
doing. I am very content with knowing, if 
only I could know. That is an august enter- 
tainment, and would suffice me a great while. 
To know a little, would be worth the expense 
of this world. I hear always the law of 
Adrastia, "that every soul which had acquired 
any truth, should be safe from harm until 
another period." 

I know that the world I converse with in 
the city and in the farms, is not the world I 
think. I observe that difference, and shall 
observe it. One day, I shall know the valii^ 



60 EXPERIENCE. 

and law of this discrepance. But I have not 
found that much was gained by manipular 
attempts to realize the world of thought. 
3Iany eager persons successively make an ex- 
periment in this way, and make themselves 
ridiculous. They acquire democratic mnnners, 
they foam at the mouth, they hate and deny. 
Worse, I observe, that, in the history of man- 
kind, there is never a solitary exam|)le of suc- 
cess, — taking their own tests of success. I 
say this polemically, or in reply to the inquiry, 
why not realize your world ? But far be from 
me the despair which prejudges the law by a 
paltry empiricism, — since there never was a 
right endeavor, but it succeeded Patience and 
patience, we shall win at the last. AVe must 
be very suspicious of the deceptions of the 
element of time. It takes a good deal of time 
to eat or to sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, 
and a very little time to entertain a hope and 
an insight which becomes the light of our 
life. We dress our garden, eat our dinners, 
discuss the household with our wives, and 
these things make no impression, are forgotten 
next week ; but in the solitude to which 
every man is always returning, he has a sanity 
and revelations, which in his passage into new 
worlds he will carry with him. Never mind 
the ridicule, never mind the defeat : up again, 
old heart ! — it seems to say, — there is victory 
yet for all justice; and the true romance which 
the world exists to realize, will be the trans- 
formation of genius into practical power. 



The KORAN. 

Koran of Mohammed, The. Translated by George Sale. 12mo.. 
cloth, 336 pages, GOc. 

Mohammed wins no followers in Christendom, 
but every intelligent reader is interested to know -what was 
the inspiration that, during centuries, held his sword vic- 
torious over a large part of Asia, Africa and Europe, and 
still holds for him 130.000.000 followers in the Eastern 
world. Until I brought out this edition (good type, nicely 
printed and bound in cloth), the only " K^ran "published 
in this country (the same translation) was sold at f *J 75 per 
copy. The volume will always be, at least, a literary 
curiosity. 

The Great Eeformatioii. 

D'.Aubigne. History of the Refrvrmation. By J. H. Merle 
D'Aubigne. D.D. With about 300 wc>od engravings. 727 large dou- 
ble-column pages, $3.00, reduced to 81. 75" 

A remarkably interesting and exhaustive his- 
tory of one of the greatest religious movements of the ages. 
Prepared with the greatest care, diligent research, and 
earuest and long-continued toil, its great merits were in- 
stantlv recognized, it bec4ime immediately popular, and 
for more thali half a century it has been the standard his- 
tory of the great Reformation of which it treats. 

Xo less than six different English editors 
issued the work, while it was also printed in Grerman, 
Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, and Armenian. It is 
supjwsed that more than 2lH3.(KX) copies have been sold in 
the United States alone. It is probably now more widely 
disseminated throughout the country than any other relig- 
ious historical work. The qualities which have made it 
popular for more than fifty years will continue to keep it 
a standard and invaluable book. The edition here offered 
is printed from large type, is profusely illustrated, and 
wonderfully low in price. 

St. Augustine. 

St. AuiTostine, Confessions of. Translated by E. D. Ptsey, D.D. 
Ideal Edition, cloth. 60c. 

*' Xo one mind has ever made such an im- 
pression on Christian thought. Xo one can hesitate to 
acknowledge the depth of his spiritual conviction and the 
strength, solidity, and penetration with which he handled 
the most difficult questions and wrought all the elements 
of his experience, and his profound scriptural knowledge, 
into a great system."— John Titlloch, Principal of St. An- 
drew's University. 



THE ALDEX CATALOGUE.— Se^ jroat pages for terms, etc 

Tlie TZSToman's Story. 

Holloway. The Woman's Story, as told by twenty famous 
AiMericiin women, wliose names are appended. Edited by Laura 
(_:. Hollowav. with a biographical sketch and aiine jwrtrait of each 
author. Large l:2ino, cloth, $1.00 Agents Wanted. 

By 20 Famous Women. 

Abba Gould Woolson. 



Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

Ha.rriet Prescott Sp( >ff ord. 

Rebecca Harding Davis. 

Edna Dean Proctor. 

" Josiah Allen's Wife." 

Nora Perry. 

Augusta Evans Wilson. 

Louise Chandler Moulton 

Celia Thaxter. 

" Grace Greenwood."" 



Mary J. Holrnes. 
Jlargaret E. Sangster. 
Oliver Thorne Miller. 
Elizabeth W. Champney. 
Julia C. R. Dorr. 
Marion Harland. 
Louisa May Alcott, 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
Rose Terry Cooke. 



'•The book shows what thoroughly good work in 
fiction has been done by Axnerican women, how wide a range the}' 
have taken as novelists, and how high the literary merit of theii- 
writings is." — Literary World, Boston. 

" A book compiled upon such a plan can not fail to be 
interesting on many accounts, and few books of half a thousand 
[)ages will be found more entertaining by the majority of readex's." 
—The Northwest Magazine, St. Paul, Mmn. 

' ' Story lovers, and they are millions, will be delighted 
with the work, both for the merit of the stories and for the faces of 
the authors. On the whole it is a grand hit. We predict for the 
work a wide sale and great fa.yor/''— Herald Gospel Liberty, Dayton. 

■*' 'The Short Story' is a wonderful achievement in lit- 
erature, and to its production the best efforts of the most highly 
gifted of our \\Titers have been devoted for years. This volume 
more than any other with which we are acquainted, will show to 
what degree of perfection the American woman has carried the art 
of telling the short story well, and besides having an interest to the 
student of literature, will prove of lasting interest as a charming 
book for the fireside circle."— 37ie Guardian, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" The sort of book that is a well-spring of delight in 
every household. The reading matter is well enough, being favorite 
tales selected, as the editor informs us, by each author f lom her own 
writings, but the portraits that accompany the biographical notices 
are a unique experience in most of our lives. There is no false senti- 
ment in the manner in which these talented ladies are reproduced. 
The ]Vliotographs are naught in extenuation and naught in malice. 
And we congratulate the persons they represent on the absence of 
feminine vanity that would prevent the publication of this faitliful 
record. The sketches are done by a practised hand. Mrs. HoUoway 
is the accomphshed author of 'The Ladies of the White House,' 
' The Mothers of Great Men and Women.' "-r77ie Hartford Courant. 

"It was a happy thought to select a story from a 
score of our representative female writers of fiction and embody 
them in a single book, appending a portrait and a brief biographical 
sketch of each. We have thus a composite picture of the best types 
and characteristics of our most noted and popular female writers. 
As 1 1 lese sketches were ' selected by their authors for this volume,' 
'and in every case the writers pronounced them to be their best 
sketch work.' we are able to test tlieir judgment by the verdict of 
the public. The ' sketch ' prefacmg each story is in admirable taste 

brief, tense, sensible, and informing, without flattery^ oc laudation. 

As Americans, we have reason to be proud of such a list. We doubt 
if aay other nation can make a better exhibit of living female talent 
in the world of fiction. The book merits and will doubtless get a 
wide circulatioa."— r/i^ Homiletic Heview, New York. 



EPICTETUS. 

Kl)i<trtns, Til" Toaehin^rs < f . translatod, with U'.tes, by T. \V. 
lldlif.-.iuii. Ideal cHlitioa, :JiO i'a;.^e,s, ck)t,h, 'Mpc. 

'' A \vv\ credifalik! ti-jiii'sl;iti(»n<»r inajivof tlie 

l»< st s;i\ iims of Epiclclus, 11k' pccuii.-U' cxrcilciK c of v\ liosr 
|.li.l.)soj)!iy is that il is but a liille lower tlmii the humat,- 
iii.s (if the ])iiil(>s()i)liy of liic givatcst of all moral teachers/ 
—Sunday A'ews, (Jliarleston, 8. C. 

" A beaiit'ful edition of tlie crippled philoso- 
pher. The philosophy of Epictctus is stamped with an 
intensely practical character, and exhibits a high, idealistic 
Jypeof morality. He is an earnest, sometimes stern and 
sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who de- 
spises the mere graces of a literary and rhetorical lecturer, 
*ud the subtleties of an abstruse logic." — The American, 
Nashville, Tenn. 

" In these days of liberal views regarding the 
essentials of religion, when eventhe Westminster Catechism 
must stand or fall on its merits, the thoughtful man will 
welcome any evidence brought to his attention of the fact 
that in all ages of the world there have been ' Seekers 
after God,' to whom moral questions were all important, 
and who believed profoundly and taught unceasingly the 
bottom truths in which all good men have coufldence and 
hope. Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus was an emi- 
nent teacher, was certainly a light to the feet of Grecian 
citizens of an age when its opposite ideal. Epicureanism, or 
the following of pleasure as an end, tlireatened to plunge 
the world into the ruin of utter selfishness. This edition is 
in a very useful form, well printed, double leaded, and 
translated into good idiomatic English." — The Republic, 
St. Louis, Mo. 

" Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus are a trio of 
rjreat names which deserve to live as long as civilization. 
Seldom have sentences been translated into more terse and 
expressive English than those of this old Stoic, who lived 
in the last half of the first century of the Christian era — 
but there is no evidence that he had ever heard of the 
teachings of Christ. The true position of man in the 
world according to Epictetus is that he is a member of a 
great system which comprehends God and men. Each 
human being is a citizen of two cities, one in his own 
nation, and also of the city of gods and men. All men, he 
says, are sons of God and kindred in nature with the 
divinity. He claimed that each man has within him a 
guardian spirit — a god within him whicli never sleeps. 
The writing is one to interest thoughtful readers." — Inter 
Ocean, Chicago. 



McCartliy's Sliort His- 
tory of Ireland. 

McCartliy. A Short History of Ireland, from the Earliest 
Times to 1882. By Justin H. McCarthy. Ideal Edition, large type, 
cloth, 35c. 

'•An excellent history of Ireland. I^rief, 
bright, entertaining." — Christian Advocate, Detroit, Mich. 

" It is a good book to read, and i2:ood to liavt* 
haudy for reference, since the liistory of Ireland is ' mak- 
ing ' every day more prominently in the public vision tiiau 
any other country." — Methodist Recorder, Pittsburgh. 

" A Short History of Ireland brings the 
narrative down from the earliest time to the present d;iy. 
It is sufficiently full to present a good piclure of Iri.-^li 
settlement and civilization, anil of Irish degradaliun and 
misery." — Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, O. 

"This little hook is one of Mr. McCa!-tii\'s 
best productions. It tells the storj' of Ireland from liic 
earliest times down to 1882. It is an interesting story thai 
Mr. Mi;Carthy tells of the history and romance and traiii- 
tion of a great people, of the pathos of tlidr lives, of the 
heroism of their deeds, of the sutfenngs which have made 
them a race of mart3'rs." — Sunday News, Charleston, 8. C 

"The reader will e.xpect and find that it em- 
bodies the romance, tlie heroism, and the pati»os that a 
literary enthusiast will bring to such a subject. The 
reader who has not lime at hand for more complete history 
will tind the little volume of value. '^r<» crowd the chang- 
ing history of Ireland from the earliest times to the present 
day into such small space, by an entliusiastic admirer, 
when there is so much to tell, takes courage. But he 
makes it both entertaining and instructive history." — Iiitcr- 
Ocean, Chicago. 

" We are glad to welcome this new editi»>n. 
It is in the large, fair type which is getting to be 
understood as Mr. Alden's style. It is neatly bound, 
and as is usual with this publisher the book is oHered at an 
astordshingly low price. Mr. McCarthy is naturally elo 
(iU(.'nt. Whatever his pen touches becomes interesting to 
his ivatlers. But it was to be expected lie would be at Ids 
best in a history of Ireland. The history mit,dit pa.ss for a 
novel in its depiction of heroic conduct and its touches of 
romance and the trauedy in individual as well as national 
life. One would be behind the times who did not make 
himself familiar with Irish history in tlu>se (lays. There 
is no book better adapted to tlie public want or more 
timely than this."— Farm, Field and Stockman, Chicago 



The Elzevir Library— Continued. 

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

803 The Lady of the Lake 10c 131 Rokeby 6© 

S72 Marmion 10c | 

By JOHN RUSKIN. 

357 Sesame and Lilies. 8c I 358 Etbics of the Dust 8c 

lis Crown of Wild Olive 8c I 207 Art and Life Selections. . .12c 

^y NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

347 Moss^ from an Old Manse. I. . 10c 

34C " •' " " " n 10c 

343 Twic fold Tales. I lOc 

225 " " " n lOc 

234 Gra' dfather's Chair lOc 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

5 W Json, Andrew. The Sea-Serpents of Science 2c 

7 Richardson, Charles F. Motive and Habit of Rea.ding 2e 

10 Alden, Ellen Tracy. Queen Mable and Other Poems 2c 

12 A^'illiams, W. Mattieu. World-Smashing, Lunar Volcanoes, etc 2c 

13 Peabody, S. H. A Half Horn- in Natural History 2c 

30 Pryde, David. Highways of Literature 8c 

42 Rawlinsoa. The Civilizations of Asia 2c 

rn Huxley. The Evidences of Evolution 2c 

54 Bacon's Essays. Complete 12c 

56 Kingsley. Charles. The Celtic Hermits 2c 

69 Conybeare and Howson. A Half Horn- with St. Paul 2c 

79 Irving, Washington. The Spectre Bridegroom 2c 

83 Lamartine. Fior D'Aliza 2c 

99 Godet, F. The Four Chief Apostles 2e 

103 Creasy, Sir Edward. The Battle of Marathon 2c 

109 The Battle of Hastings 2e 

111 The Battle of Saratoga : 2c 

113 Locke, John. Conduct of the Understanding 8c 

116 Macaulay, Dr. Luther Anecdotes 8c 

122 Orton, Edw., LL.D. Public Health 2c 

124 Baring-Gould. Legend of the Wandering Jew 2c 

129 D'Aubigne. Erasmus and Henry VHI 2c 

132 Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty lOc 

134 Arnold, Matthew. Lecture on Numbers ac 

137 Giffen, R. Progress of the Working Classes 3e 

143 Thoughts from Greek Authors, .^ischylus, etc 3e 

145 The same — Aristotle, etc 2c 

146 The same— Demosthenes, Diogenes, etc 2c 

147 The same— Euripides, etc 2e 

155 Thomas Carlyle. By the author of Obiter Dicta 3c 

157 Lubbock, Sir John. On Leaves 4c 

160 Birrell, Augustine. Obiter Dicta 15c 

365 Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful 10c 

163 Holyoake, G. J. Co-operation 10c 

173 Bernard, George S. Cfivil Service Reform 18c 

185 Froude, James Anthony, Erasmus and Luther . . 2c 

200 Lubbock, Sir John. Pleasures of Reading 2g 

229 Froude. James Anthony. History of the Knights Templars. . 5c 

234 Transcendentalism, an Essay 5c 

281 Johnson, Dr. Rasselas 7c 

290 Saintine, J. 2. B. Picciola 7c 

321 Bright, John. The Love of Books Sc 

349 Irving. Rip Van Winkle 3c 

372 Washington's Farewell Address, etc 3c 

Froude, James Anthony. On Education 3c 

Brown, Dr. John. Rab and his Friends Se 

Euskin. The Lamp of Memory Sc 

White, Prest., A. D. Message of the Nineteenth Century to 

the Twentieth Jc 

Hameiton, Philip Gilbert. Women and Marriage 3c 

Selections from Confucius and Mencius 36 

Richardson, Prof. Ch«is. F. The Choice of Books lOe 

Classic Essays. Part II. complete 10c 

Mill, John Stuart. Socialism Sc 

Phelps, J. W. Madagascar, A History 10c 

197 Canon Farrar. On Temperance 2c 

IdO — laecOa i}< Nations ^ 



The Elzevir Library— Contin aed . 

By THOMAS CARLYLE. 

3^ Tlie Hero as Poet ; Dante, Shakespeare . V. 

343 The Hero as Pi'ophet ; Mohammed and Islam <ic 

342 The Hero as Divmity ; Odin, Paganism, Mythology 3c 

^ The Hero as Priest ; Luther, Knox, etc 3c 

351 — As Man of Letters ; Johnson, Rousseau, Burns 3c 

352 — As King ; Cromwell, Napoleon, etc 3c 

Essay on (>oethe , • — 4c 

On the Choice of Books 'ic 

By;T. B. MACAULAY. 

105 Virginia, Ivry 2c I 192 Essay on W-na. Pitt 5e 

^8 Essay on Milton 5c The Athenian Orators 2c 

Frederick The Great 12c | Essay on History he 

By HANS ANDERSEN. 



56 The Story Teller 8c 

58 Shoes of Fortune 8c 

59 Christmas Greeting 9c 

60 The Ice Maiden 8c 



61 Picture Book without Pic- 
tures 8c 

62 The Ugly Duck, etc 8c 

63 Mud King's Daughter. So 

By CHARLES LAMB. 

170 Last Essays of Elia 12c 1 Essays— Selections 3c 

AMERICAN HUMORISTS. 

19 James Kussell Lowell 3c | 20 Ai-temus Ward • 2o 



108 Kerr, Orpheus C. Tints of the Times, etc 2c 

175 Sheridan. The School for Scandal . . 8c 

179 Jouson, Ben. Every Man in His Humor S<; 

195 Classic Hmuorists ; Anacreon, Barham, etc 2c 

294 Dr. Rankin. Brechin Ballads . ..2c 

312 Cowper. John Gilpin's Ride, and Other Poems . . dc 

SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS- 

Ideal Edition, each 7c.— 20 Plays f 07- JSl.OO.. 



342 The Tempest. 

344 Gentlemen of Verona. 

245 Merry Wives of W. 

246 Measure for Measure. 

247 The Comedy of Ei'rors 
348 Much Ado. 

250 Love's Labor Lost. 

251 Midsummer Night. 
253 Merchant of Venice. 

253 As You Like It. 

254 Tiiming of the Shrew. 

255 Airs Well. 

260 Twelfth Night. 

261 The Winter's Tale. 

262 Kiug John. 

2G4 Tragedy of Richard II. 
2a5 Henry IV. Part I. 

366 Henry IV. Part II. 

367 Life of King Henry V. 



268 Henry VL Part I. 

269 Henry VI. Part II. 

270 Henry VI. Part HL 

271 King Richard III, 

272 King Hem-y \^n. 

273 Troilus and Oressida, 

274 Coriolanns. 

275 Titus Andronicus. 

276 Romeo and Juliet. 

278 Timon of Athens. 

279 Julius Cfiesar. 

280 Macbeth. 

282 Hamlet 

283 King Lear, 
285 Othello. 

386 Antony and Cleopatra. 
288 Cymbeline. 
292 Poems and Sonnets, 15c. 
296 Pericles 



King John and Henry V. Cheaper edition, each Sc 

ANCIENT CLASSICS for ENGLISH READERS. 

£ach 10 cts. or l,i for $1.00. 

These are not literal translations, but, far more interesting to the 
average reader, they are biographical and critical, giving extender? 
selections (translated) at once characteristic and entertaining. 



29 Caesar. Anthony TroUope. 

23 Herodotus. Geo. C Swayne 

24 Cicero. W. Lucas Collins. 
tl Aristotle. Sir Alex Grant. 
S Horace. Theodore Martin. 

30 Juvenal. Edward Walford. 
<© Tacitus. W. B, Donne. 

78 Homer's Odyssey 



81 Aristophanes. W. L. Collins. 

82 GreekAnthologj'. Lord Neaves 
a5 Euripides. W. B. Donne. 

86 Livy. W. L. Collins. 

87 Ovid. Rev. A. Church. 

90 Thucydides. W. L. Collins. 

91 Lucian. W. L. Collins. 

92 Plautus and Terrence. Ctollina. 



5t ^Eschylus. Bishop of Colombo 95 Lucretius. W. H. Mallock. 
yO PMuy. Church and Brodribb. 96 Pindar. Rev. F. D. Morice. 
i 97 Hesiod and Theognis. Davis. 



iMiiiiiii 

015 785 878 6( 



